Friday April 10 2015

Dominic Lenton, managing editor

The traditional British steel-lattice electricity pylon is one of those designs that can genuinely be described as iconic, having appeared in so many places – usual straddling a cornfield or dominating a green landscape – as shorthand for the march of technology. The new T-pylons which started going up this week aren’t a direct replacement but at two-thirds of the height will be less visually imposing and better suited to some situations. Only a few are being constructed to start with but in the future they’ll be something to look out for and perhaps the basis for a new ‘spotting’ game to keep kids occupied on long car journeys.

One of the downsides of increasing life expectancy is that more of us are going to survive long enough to develop diseases like cancer, Alzheimer’s and diabetes. Coming up with new treatments is one of the big challenges at the interface of technology and medicine and this device, which uses semiconductors to quickly measure enzyme activity, is a great example of how clever thinking can speed up the drug development process.

Alex Kalinauckas, assistant features editor

This tech development is music to the ears of smartphone owners throughout the world as it will greatly reduce the risk your phone running out of juice at a crucial moment. A battery “less prone to catching fire”, is always a winner in my book too.

Any incentives for automotive manufacturers to produce low-emission vehicles should be encouraged, but I wonder whether the Lib Dem pledge will mean much to the automotive industry. After all there’s no guarantee they’ll win the election or remain in government and even less assurance that they’ll stick to this pledge given their recent history.

Vitali Vitaliev, features editor

I was rather amused to find out about the discovery of substantial shale oil reserves near Gatwick airport, or, to be more precise, in the Horse Hill area of Surrey. The reason is that I happen to be familiar with that very picturesque spot of English countryside and have even spent some holidays at a local farm-cum-B&B. I fully understand the importance of the find (my imagination conjures up visions of huge refineries, processing crude oil straight on the spot and turning it into high-octane petrol to be pumped into the insatiable bellies of the planes, revving their engines impatiently on the tarmac of Gatwick airport), but would be very sorry to see the area’s scenic beauty overshadowed by oil pump-jacks, nodding like praying Orthodox Jews (as seen on a photo in yesterday’s Evening Standard). One of the best Horse Hill experiences I can recall was fishing in one of the farm’s ponds. And although they say that oily fish is good for one’s health, I dread to think what kind of a catch one will be able to ferret out of that pond when (and if) oil extraction commences.

Aasha Bodhani, industry features editor

The majority of smartphone users will say they have to charge their phone at least twice a day, but scientists have found a way to solve the problem. They have made a battery from aluminium which can fully recharge a phone in a minute, and replace alkaline batteries which are harmful to the environment and replace lithium-ion batteries which are known to burst into flames.

UK Oil & Gas Investments claims a new oil reserve found near Gatwick could meet up to 30 per cent of the UK’s needs. However the difficulty with extracting the oil could bring this percentage down to 5 per cent, but it still has the potential for daily oil production. Compared to the North Sea, which has produced 45 billion barrels in 40 years, the new field found could hold 158 million barrels per square mile.

E&T magazine

Graphene is a single atom-thick sheet of carbon atoms in a hexagonal lattice. Although it was only isolated for the first time in Nobel-prize winning work by Manchester physicists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov in 2004, researchers all over the world are now working on countless applications for the material, which is an effective conductor of heat and […]

Companies including including Greenpeace, WWF and the Marine Conservation Society have taken over Westminster Tube station with posters on the walls and ticket gates extolling the virtues of offshore wind power, which is now half the price it was just two years ago. ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘Thick of It’ actor Peter Capaldi was there to launch the campaign and said […]

Anyone who has ever seen the rows of containers full of compacted recyclables waiting to be shipped off to China from Southampton and other UK ports will have concluded that there is nowhere near enough capacity to process all this material at home. While the practice of sending the packaging we discard on a sea journey of thousands of miles has long been co […]

China introduced a series of strict laws in June that required local and overseas firms to submit to security checks and store user data within the country. Many businesses said that they would struggle to operate under the new regime and that vague wording of the regulations leaves foreign firms vulnerable to abstract interpretations of the rules. The new […]

The sun just about managed to emerge from behind the clouds as the ribbon was cut this morning by Claire Perry, the minister for climate change and industry. The solar facility is based on Clayhill Farm near Flitwick in Bedfordshire. “For the solar industry, Clayhill is a landmark development and paves the way for a sustainable future, where subsidies are no […]

The electric-powered Mototoks reduce emissions by replacing traditional diesel tugs and should help to improve the punctuality of its planes, the carrier said. Five of the high-tech vehicles are being used across 25 stands at Heathrow Terminal 5 and have already moved a large number of planes carrying around 100,000 customers in total. The Mototok’s electric […]

One of the main reasons that industrial customers are reluctant to move from wired to wireless is the problems associated with stability. Wireless transmission is NOT as reliable as wired transmission. However, by following certain best practices it is possible to set up a wireless network that will provide the level of reliability needed for M2M communicati […]

In July, a penguin-shaped security robot was reported to have fallen into a fountain in an office reception and “drowned”. Unable to right itself, the unwieldy robot became essentially useless and had to be rescued by its human colleagues. While robots like these have many abilities humans are not capable of – such as collecting and storing huge amounts of d […]

The earlier Curiosity rover (pictured above), which is currently roaming the surface of Mars, is equipped with a ‘ChemCam’ which is designed to capture the chemical makeup of its surroundings with a specially designed laser system. It is the most powerful laser to operate on the surface of another planet and the burst of infrared light it fires lasts only a […]

Shared mobility is gaining traction in urban India as well as in tier cities. Urban India turns to shared mobility for the sake of convenience and tier cities view it as a cost-saving option. “The interplay of technology and mobility will bring a paradigm change in the auto industry; expectedly it will intensify over the next few years and span out into mult […]